The Sydney Morning Herald
Letters: Too religious to go to jail
Date: 17/10/2000
It was with a sense of shock and outrage that I read the article "Dirty
Laundry" by Paul Barry (Herald, October 14).
Since when does belonging to a religion stop a guilty person from
serving a prison sentence?
On the same day, we read that F.A. Pugliese was jailed for five years
for defrauding investors of $628,000.
N. Goldberg defrauded Australia of $42 million, not including the social
security fraud, and he will serve only 2 years! I urge the DPP to
fight for a longer jail term for all concerned.
R.W.A. Lindsay, Bellevue Hill.
The Jewish faith, like other faiths, prohibits stealing and fraud. It is
therefore difficult for this non-kosher Jew to understand the
reasoning behind Judge Strong's decision not to jail members of the
Goldberg family merely because of their "ultra-orthodox" beliefs. It
would seem that their judicially found devout belief should have
constrained them from committing the fraud.
As their beliefs clearly did not prevent them from committing fraud, it
is peculiar that they should have been spared the ordinary
consequence of their actions by the profession of those beliefs. Does
this mean that they or others of a similar view can commit other
crimes without threat of imprisonment. This could be information of use
to many.
The monastic life of a prisoner should be of little fear to the
religious. There is enough time for meditation, prayer and repentance.
Also,
I can assure them, from personal experience, that being imprisoned does
not spare one the attention of Orthodox rabbis. Far from it.
When I was in Long Bay, two rabbis were assiduous in their attempts to
comfort me and the other Jews in jail.
As far as kosher is concerned, special diets are available. In fact, the
meat in prison is generally of so poor a quality and so badly
prepared that it offers one the opportunity of becoming a vegetarian and
thus the keeping of kashrut is made much simpler.
Howard Hilton, Alexandria.
So the Goldbergs are getting off lightly because of the possibility that
prison would be "not only traumatic but deeply humiliating,
degrading and offensive to [their] religious and cultural background".
How often have we heard a judge take these factors into
consideration when sentencing an Aboriginal person?
Susan Kennett, Erskineville.
John Laws was too rich and famous to go to jail. Peter Reith was too
powerful to go to jail. Now some of the Goldberg family are too
religious to go to jail. I wonder what chance a poor, unknown atheist
with an unpaid Telstra bill would have of staying out of jail?
One law for the rich, famous, powerful and religious and one for the
rest of us.
S. Fraser, South West Rocks.
--
**********************************
'Click' to protect the rainforest:
Make the Rainforest Site your homepage!
http://www.therainforestsite.com/
**********************************
------------------------------------------------------
RecOzNet2 has a page @ http://www.green.net.au/recoznet2 and is archived at
http://www.mail-archive.com/
To unsubscribe from this list, mail [EMAIL PROTECTED], and in the body
of the message, include the words: unsubscribe announce or click here
mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=unsubscribe%20announce
This posting is provided to the individual members of this group without permission
from the
copyright owner for purposes of criticism, comment, scholarship and research under
the "fair
use" provisions of the Federal copyright laws and it may not be distributed further
without
permission of the copyright owner, except for "fair use."
RecOzNet2 is archived for members @
http://www.mail-archive.com/recoznet2%40paradigm4.com.au/
